Adelman with an array of lighting designs and objects.
Photo courtesy Lindsey Adelman

The workshop employs conventional tools as well as more unorthodox methods, like using Scotch-Brite on a drill to polish metals.
Photo by Lauren Coleman

Lighting designer Lindsey Adelman‘s work looks like it came straight out of the lab. From her sprays of brass armature that resemble giant molecular models and strands of DNA, to a series of spiky, spiny candelabras that look like tree fungus (and would make great centerpieces at a goth wedding). Each of these otherworldly creations take shape in the hands of her 12 employees in a bright, well-lit studio on the Bowery in New York City. We paid a visit to see how it all works.

Adelman’s studio is at 195 Chrystie Street, a nine-story building that’s home to hundreds of graphic design, illustration, photography and architecture firms. Most of the action occurs in a 1,000-square-foot workshop and office where her team of 12 is taking orders, CAD modeling future projects, building chandeliers, and packing and shipping completed lamps.

From the long communal worktable to the eclectic playlist — everything from Frank Sinatra to Dr. Dre — studio culture is everything to Adelman. “Our life as a 12-person studio team is all about process,” she says. “We never see the final product, it goes out of here in pieces, in boxes. So the process has to be enjoyable, because that’s our life.”

Producing lighting is a “slow, meticulous process,” says Adelman, but one that is extremely rewarding. “You’re using two hands and two eyes, and you’re really paying attention. You’re figuring out how the parts fit together, then you attach it to your ceiling, and it lights up! There’s a level of gravitation that’s very different from the normal interaction in our day to day life.”

Adelman might be best known for bringing that gravitational experience to the non-lighting-designing public. In 2010 she launched You Make It, where she provided online instructions for a series of her own chandelier designs made with off-the-shelf parts.

The response was enthusiasm from the DIY crowd—and horror from her fellow designers. “I had really close friends that said it was the dumbest business decision I’ve ever made,” she laughs. But Adelman didn’t do it for business reasons, she says, she did it to create a sense of community. “I enjoy making things in a group,” she says. “I like that energy, and it has so much to do with making lighting.”

The team also performs some MacGyver-esque hacks to their tools, like affixing a swatch of Scotch-Brite onto a drill to buff metals.

The community at the studio centers around power tools — lathe, drill press — but the team also performs some MacGyver-esque hacks to their tools, like affixing a swatch of Scotch-Brite onto a drill to buff metals. “Everyone has their favorite tool,” she says. “We got this giant hammer a few weeks ago.”

In a studio where multiple projects are in motion at any given time, organization is key. A system of plastic bins on plywood shelves serve as an at-the-ready materials library for the team. “I find it soothing to walk into a space and feel like you can find everything,” says Adelman, who notes that they did CAD drawings of what the system would look like before they installed the shelves. But that everything-in-its-place philosophy allows for the chaos of making, too. “It anticipates the mess,” she says.

Also part of Adelman’s philosophy is a commitment to learning new skills, like when she introduced a new type of porcelain shade to a chandelier design. “We found a local community ceramics studio where a few of the staff could go get memberships and learn how to make the porcelain shades themselves,” she says.

That local skill sharing and sourcing is preferable, but it isn’t born from an aversion to mass production, Adelman says. “I wouldn’t even say it’s any kind of moral standpoint, it’s just smart in terms of business. You have total control and know it’s exactly the level of quality that it should be.”

Aside from the communal workshop, Adelman also has a 400-square-foot room on the first floor that serves as her own private ideation studio. Here, in a kind of safe room, tables are draped with feathers and oyster shells, there’s spotty cell phone reception, no Internet, and plenty of room for her to wander through her inspiration boards.

Getting away from the action is the only way for her to clear her mind and come up with new narratives, like icicles dripping off a barn in Maine, which shaped a recent installation of pale pink glass. She calls them Wall Stalactites.

“I have to go get away from watching chandeliers being screwed together to actually think abstractly,” she says. “In a sense I’m day dreaming, and then I come upstairs and give form to that abstract feeling.”